Nigel McFarlane posits that the days of the free ride when searching the Internet are ending. Search engines have become such ubiquitous tools that we use them without thought. In the future, though, they're more likely to use us.

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All technologies have their glory days, a blessed period during which no one
questions and everyone assents. There was a time when you wouldn't be
caught dead without a mobile phone; now you're more likely to complain
about the cost involved than celebrate the freedom provided. The
answering-my-mobile pose, once worth so many social points, has been replaced
with the mobile huddle: sorry to be annoying. For some time, we've enjoyed
glory days in the realm of search applications, whether desktop search or web
search. But it's likely that recent trends in search tools will change all
that. The simple search experience that you currently enjoy probably won't
be simple forever.

It's All a Blur

Your current search tools are probably neatly divided into two
categories:

To find documents lost somewhere on your hard disk, you
might use Windows' Find Files or Folders feature, recently renamed Search,
on the Start menu (or its Macintosh equivalent, Finder).

For finding web content, you likely use Google's home
page, possibly embedded in a web browser.

This distinction between web and desktop is blurring. (See my article
"Desktop Search Engine Feature Fest" for the details.) Search is no
longer a mere feature; now it's a product—backed in
almost all cases by a commercial company with dollars on their minds.

The increasing availability of broadband Internet, at least for the lucky and
the desperate, complicates product offerings in the search space. You don't
need Windows if you can run your desktop or your applications from a server or a
browser, so the desktop is more negotiable than it has been for a long time.
It's no surprise that Google's extraordinarily cashed-up tentacles are
worming their way into the desktop, or that Windows (Microsoft being at least as
cashed-up as Google) is reaching out onto the web. "Search" is
starting to mean "search everywhere."

These new blended search tools are (for now) so difficult to install that
only someone paid to do reviews would sanely attempt it. Once installed,
however, some of these tools are very slick—so much so that starting
Microsoft's MSN Toolbar or Google's Desktop Search for the first time
is far from a rational experience. When installing a search tool to scan
precious local files, there's a natural concern as to possible
consequences, especially when the tool trumpets "integrated web and desktop
search." Visions of your files heading elsewhere over the Internet? The
relief is palpable when a window visually identical to the trusted Google brand
appears, or when a new toolbar visually identical to the rest of the Windows
brand neatly integrates itself in the desktop. In that moment of concern and
subsequent relief, the tool provider has cemented the loyalty of an old customer
for life, using no argument other than a brand reminder.

Under such circumstances, few people have the desire to backtrack and do a
rigorous analysis, even though adoption based on nothing but a brand mark is
famously unreliable as a measure of the quality of the goods.

Furthermore, this buying moment is not exactly provided by idealists. Google,
Microsoft, and others intend to make a fair profit out of searching—a
profit that ultimately derives from you. Thus, these new search tools are
somewhat dodgy:

They track you more than they used to, mingling your local presence with
your web history.

They deliver correlated information to systems that you don't know
about and whose use you can only guess at (although that's not so
new).

Their owners disclaim loudly and often that your privacy and anonymity is
preserved at all costs. Once upon a time we bought personal computers because
they were, well, personal. Now Microsoft and others want to patch your
computer; record your search activities; and extract feedback about the tools
you use, how you use them, and whether you can make them crash. In 2005, PC
stands for participating computer, not private computer.